Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

FEW FLAMES BURN IN GERMANY 279in other things he still understood nothing about money, he had at leastlearned that it meant independence. And in those years on the magicmountain it dawned on him, a man in his late thirties, that private lifecould also have its glamour. With Angela, his niece, Geli for short, herode through the countryside from time to time, showing the blond childhow 'Uncle Alf' could bewitch the masses and scare his lieutenants outof their wits; he commanded and raged before her eyes, he was kind orgrim, and felt as happy as a romantic tribune of the people in a bad play.The lieutenants, most of whom led frugal lives, were irritated; most ofall, they resented his money-making. In 1926 he told Gauleiter Munderin Wurttemberg that Mussolini had invited him to call on him in Italy.'Go at once!' was Munder's advice. 'No,' was the Fuhrer's answer; 'toimpress Mussolini I would have to arrive with at least three automobiles— I just haven't got them yet.' There was always ample pomp aroundhim, and it was one of his master accomplishments that he was able toconceal his own comfortable person in a gray legend of frugality andeven asceticism. On the lieutenants, of course, he could put nothingover. They openly accused him of drawing too much money from theparty. This was at a provincial Party Day in Stuttgart in 1925. What, he— he drew too much money? Could anyone deny that he never took apenny of the thousands of marks that his big meetings brought in? True,this money actually went to the party, but not to the gaus; inexorably itwent to the central office in Munich where Hitler's party treasurer, FranzXaver Schwarz, took it from the gauleiters with an iron fist.But Hitler himself had another way of earning money; he wrotenewspaper articles which, in the opinion of everyone excepting himself,were among the worst products of German journalism, and could not becompared to his speeches — precisely because they were essentiallyspeeches written down. And for these articles he demanded giganticfees of the party's miserable provincial dailies and weeklies. 'Yes,indeed,' he said when called to account, 'I accept payment for thesearticles and good payment; after all, I am not the employee of ourenterprise, I am its founder and leader.' This, too, for Munder's benefit,but the discontented gauleiter refused to